Aspects of the present disclosure relate generally to wireless communication systems, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for improving the signaling of data compression for an efficient determination of whether a data packet is compressed or uncompressed, thereby providing consistent service in a wireless communication system.
Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as telephony, video, data, messaging, broadcasts, and so on. Such networks, which are usually multiple access networks, support communications for multiple users by sharing the available network resources. One example of such a network is the UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN). The UTRAN is the radio access network (RAN) defined as a part of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), a third generation (3G) mobile phone technology supported by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). The UMTS, which is the successor to Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) technologies, currently supports various air interface standards, such as Wideband-Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA), Time Division-Code Division Multiple Access (TD-CDMA), and Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA). The UMTS also supports enhanced 3G data communications protocols, such as High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), which provides higher data transfer speeds and capacity to associated UMTS networks.
In some wireless communications systems, a compressor component may execute a compression algorithm to compress all packets transmitted to a de-compressor component that executes a corresponding de-compression algorithm. In some cases, though, the compressor component may encounter packets that would be better left uncompressed. In these cases, however, the compressor may not be able to send an uncompressed packet to the de-compressor component, as the de-compressor component may operate under the assumption that all packets received from the compressor component are compressed.
Thus, improvements are desired in exchanging a data packet between a compressor component and a de-compressor component.